


Drifting Under

by Mariyekos



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Extended Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:47:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22620475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mariyekos/pseuds/Mariyekos
Summary: The first time Rhea brought him down to the throne, Byleth's breath caught in his throat. There was something about seeing the throne in person that had Byleth almost overcome with emotion. The stone seat, commanding the room from its place at the top of seemingly endless steps. The emotion it brought was choking, in a way, making Byleth's fists clench and his breaths stutter. All he could think was that he needed to go to it, needed to sit in it. And yet, when he moved to do so...something felt off. But Rhea wasn't going to accept no for an answer.* A slightly AU version of Rhea taking Byleth to the throne room and returning over and over, hoping to see Sothis return while Byleth only finds himself more and more drained.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 31





	Drifting Under

**Author's Note:**

> I first wrote this in October of last year, then fleshed it out to the point of nearly doubling the word count in late December. It's been sitting in my google drive ever since, while I waited to see if I wanted to make it into a multi-chapter story or not. As you can see by the chapter count, "or not" seemed to win out, but with the way I wrote the ending...perhaps I'll make it into a series. I don't know, we'll have to wait and see. Anyway, that's about it for what I have to say, so I hope you enjoy.

The first time Rhea brought him down to the throne, Byleth's breath caught in his throat. 

(Not his heart. That had never done anything for him, if he even had one. Blood had never spurted from his wounds as if powered by a heartbeat. There had never been a thump in his chest like a heartbeat. Never a pounding against his ribs during a hard battle or a slow, uneven rhythm when he was driven to a state beyond simple exhaustion. So a breath was close as it got. That was how his father used to tell whether Byleth was still alive or not when he was knocked unconscious or simply sleep. By putting his head to Byleth's chest and listening to soft breaths, feeling it rise and fall without a nearby beating to cause it, powered by something unnatural instead. Something that wasn't a heart.)

There was something about seeing the throne in person that had Byleth almost overcome with emotion. The stone seat, a large swirl carved into its back, commanding the room from its place at the top of seemingly endless steps. The emotion it brought was choking, in a way, making Byleth's fists clench and his breaths stutter. But it also brought tears to his eyes, something that had only ever come after his father had been mortally wounded and Byleth was left helpless in the face of the one death he simply could not move on from. The death he couldn’t even force time to prevent. It was a complicated emotion that brought the tears. Intense, for sure. But also unidentifiable. 

Sothis had been his guide when emotions began to hit him with significant power, back when they first began to speak to each other. He would watch his students chat with each other and sing praises of their work and Byleth's teachings, and a tight warmth would bloom in Byleth's chest. Pride, Sothis had called it. Pride, and happiness.

Happiness Byleth had already understood to an extent. His father had taught him about that, even if Byleth always had trouble expressing the small bits of happiness he did feel before the monastery. And then the slamming happiness he began to feel thereafter. But his father was dead. Neither he nor Sothis could tell Byleth the name of the emotion he felt. They were gone, after all. All that remained of his father were the jokes Alois liked to tell and the dagger at Byleth's waist and the twisted thickness of his knuckles (because he certainly hadn't inherited his father's height or width. Only his hands. Nothing more). All that remained of Sothis was the strange new color of Byleth's eyes and hair, and the pulsing of the sword at his side.

And that throne. That throne, which had frequented his dreams for as long as he could remember, that he saw in person for the first time. Huge and cold and distant. It was empty, after all, as it had never been before. Something in Byleth called for him to remedy that. Longed to see the familiar sight of the throne and the room it was in, to call down the soft light that had blanketed Sothis for all those years while Byleth watched her sleep, illuminating the otherwise pitch-black room just enough to leave him with questions about the mystery girl's identity, and why she sat on a throne so grand yet so much bigger than herself.

Byleth was drawn back to the present by Rhea's voice, soft and even. A lulling voice, carefully calculated to put him at ease (though the hint of an unnerving lilt kept him from completely relaxing, as there was something about Rhea that had always put Byleth on edge, even if he couldn't put his finger on the source). She was staring at him, eyes half open, smile wide. 

When Rhea told Byleth she thought he should sit on the throne, he was happy to oblige. Not because he felt a need to listen to her. But because he'd felt a need to do so as soon as he laid eyes on it. Something in his chest. Not a heart, but…

He walked up the stairs. Every step sent a pulse up his body. It was small at the bottom. Small enough he thought of it only as a reverberating impact from the click of his heels against stone. But as he ascended it grew stronger, and Byleth knew the feeling was not physical. Was the feeling he had the thing a person was referring to when they said something resonated with their soul?

Finally he reached the top. Byleth paused for a moment, simply staring at the throne before him. He could feel Rhea's gaze burning into his back. But for all his anticipation, for the rushed acceptance of her offer, for the pulsing in his body that resembled the heartbeat he had never had…

Byleth suddenly didn't want to sit down.

It didn't feel right. Like it wasn't quite the time. Like it would be one day, and the throne was waiting for him, but it thought he wasn't quite ready, and he knew he wasn't ready either. The call to sit on the throne turned into a polite request to come back another day and Byleth nearly turned right back around to it.

But then Rhea called to Byleth once more. Only his name, no condescending words to accompany it. Just an anticipatory "Byleth?" that kept him where he stood, not daring to turn to see the woman who had said it. He understood the meaning of her call, the tone behind that single word. He knew she was waiting, and that her patience was running thin. She wasn’t going to let him turn back without so much as touching the throne.

So with a deep breath he sat. 

He wiggled from side to side a little, trying to find a comfortable position. It didn't quite come. So he decided to lean back in the throne and set the back of his head against the cool stone of the back's swirl, waiting for something to happen. 

Rhea had told him he would receive a message from the Goddess if he did so, and though he wouldn't admit it to anyone who asked, he wanted nothing more. To hear Sothis' voice again was all he could ask for. His father was dead and gone, and there was nothing Byleth could do to bring him back. Even turning back the hands of time had ended in failure, and Byleth knew deep in his soul that he would never again see his father in the flesh. His father was only mortal after all, and even if Byleth's appearance had changed he was no god. He could not bring back the dead. But Sothis was. She was the Goddess. The Progenitor God. The Beginning. If anyone could defy all logic and return to Byleth's side, it was her.

She didn't. 

Not after five minutes, not after ten, not after thirty. And so frustration bloomed on Rhea's face, while disappointment formed on Byleth's.

(Disappointment and something more. But he was terrible at identifying emotions. He needed Sothis for that, and she hadn't come back to him, despite Rhea's promise) 

Was Sothis really gone? Was there nothing he could do to bring her back? Or was it simply not time for her to come back, the throne refusing him until he had matured a bit or accomplished some task he had yet to identify?

The flood of armed figures into the tomb ended Byleth's time to think. He leapt off the throne and drew the Sword of the Creator, immediately cracking it out and cutting down a mage across the room. A twinge of sadness arose in Byleth at the thought of staining the throne room with blood of the unknown. But the sword pulsed like it never had before, and the twinge of sadness was replaced by the roar of fire filling Byleth's chest and allowing him to maneuver around the room such that he was scarcely hit. Even after the Flame Emperor's identity was revealed the fire burned on. A sign that _something_ was happening, even if it wasn't a revelation from the Goddess. 

Byleth wished he knew what was going on. Sothis would know. But she was gone.

So he followed Rhea out of the tomb when she asked him to, not knowing what else he could do. She didn't look at him during their walk, not even when she turned for the third floor staircase instead of the audience chamber as Byleth had been expecting. Not even when she walked into her room and sat on the bed. Not until Byleth put a hand on her shoulder and turned her head toward him because so many things were going on and he didn't understand any of it and he thought he would lose his mind if things continued as they were.

"Oh, Byleth…" Rhea's voice was soft. She looked at Byleth like he was the world, like he was her goddess, and he didn't like it. He pulled away.

Rhea either didn't care about his discomfort or ignored it, standing to take his hand. She cradled it between her palms, rubbing softly as she apologized for what had happened, promising to take him back to the throne another time to try again, because she was certain that if he had enough time, that if he wasn't interrupted by a massive group of troops declaring war on the institution he belonged to (and Byleth couldn't wrap his head around that either; why was Rhea so concerned with him when the entire Empire would soon be trying to erase the church she'd devoted her life to from the face of the planet?), Byleth would succeed. He would hear the Goddess's voice, she promised. And while Byleth didn't believe Rhea's words, the woman having long since instilled him with a feeling she couldn't be fully trusted, he agreed to go with her.

Maybe he didn't believe words that came from Rhea's mouth. But he wanted to see Sothis again, and something deep down wanted to believe in the possibility of her return, independent from whatever Rhea had to do. And with that he agreed to return to the Holy Tomb every night until the empire reached them, to sit upon the throne and attempt to call upon the goddess.

These attempts failed, however. Every night he would forsake an hour or two of sleep to sit on the throne. Every night he would be subject to an hour or two of Rhea's invasive stare, as she looked at him as if waiting for someone else. Sometimes he felt that perhaps it was her presence that was keeping Sothis away. He did not voice this concern.

Nor did he ever hear Sothis' voice. He only grew tired, and with each trip to the tomb it became harder and harder to rise from the throne. He ended up falling asleep there a few times, so wrapped up in his own exhaustion. When he awoke from those unintended naps, Rhea always looked more excited than she ever had. When he revealed his dreams had been empty, that he felt the same as he did when he went to sleep (he never admitted how drained he felt, always worse after one of those short slumbers), that excitement morphed into crushed disappointment. Not for long though. Rhea was always quick to paste up a smile, to pretend nothing was wrong.

At one point Byleth considered telling Seteth about what was going on. But something stopped him, and so he kept quiet. 

Even when, the night before the Empire's troops were supposed to arrive, Rhea escorted him down to the Holy Tomb with a small bag Byleth had never seen before. Whatever it contained was beyond him, and he felt too tired to question it. So he sat down as he always did, and it only took a few minutes before the heavy exhaustion that had sat on his shoulders for the past month forced him to close his eyes. When he started to open them, eyelids fluttering, he felt Rhea out a hand on his cheek.

"Do not worry. Rest a while, tomorrow is a big day," she told him, voice calm and dangerously sweet.

It would be a big day. So why was he sitting in a throne? He'd spent hours that morning going over plans. Hours the night before. Hours the night before that. Perhaps that was driving his exhaustion. But nothing had ever felt so strong as that night, and he could feel Rhea doing something to him but he was so out of it, falling so deep into the realm of sleep that he couldn't hope to identify whatever that was.

Not until she kissed his forehead. Then Byleth's eyes snapped open to see her back away until she reached the top step.

"I must go now," Rhea said, as if it was nothing special, "but I will return tomorrow night to begin again. The battle tomorrow will surely be intense, and I cannot risk you getting well. So wait here and sleep well, until I come back to you."

Her steps echoed throughout the tomb as she walked down the steps of the throne and across the floor. When she reached the top of the staircase burning her back to the main monastery, she gave Byleth one last look. The look of waiting for someone else.

Byleth glared back.

He could do no more. His legs wouldn't listen to him when he told them to stand. Rhea must have cast some sort of spell to keep him bound; a faint shimmer could be seen in the air in front of his knees and over his arms, swirling runes that his heavy eyelids kept him from focusing on well enough to determine what they were. Whatever spell it was it was powerful, and Byleth lacked the energy to fight it. His legs wouldn't move. His arms wouldn't budge. His fingertips hardly even twitched at his best efforts at moving them. Faintly, he realized he couldn't even fall forward to dislodge himself from the throne if he tried. He was stuck, and had no energy with which to escape.

Byleth did his best to keep his eyes open after that, to stay awake until Rhea returned, to force her to let him go. But he must've drifted off a few times, as it wasn't long before he felt the rumbling of what he knew to be war above him. He could do nothing to join the battle though, and a short time after he heard the most piercing roar he could imagine, sleep enveloped him.

And sleeping he stayed. Until war had enveloped not just Garreg Mach, but all of Fódlan, the world changing as he stayed frozen, asleep in a tomb none dared enter. Until Rhea was long since captured, taken by an enemy he had not been able to fight. 

Thus when he finally awoke and found himself able to move, he was alone.

No Rhea.

No students.

No Sothis.

And that last one really hurt. Left him feeling incomplete. Left him, cold, longing, _empty_.

After everything Rhea had put him through, after his hopes had been up and down and up once more, no Sothis.

No Sothis.

No one at all.

Just a cold, empty throne.

**Author's Note:**

> This was another one of those "Mariyekos was sleepy while writing so she wrote about a sleepy person" fics, so...sleepy Byleth you get. But that's always been...interesting? to me. The idea of someone sort of drifting away from this plane as they gradually move onto another one, caught between two worlds but not fully realizing what's going on. I could do more with this. The ending is...well, it was hard to write. It originally ended "And sleeping he stayed. For a very long time." but that seemed cheesy, so I replaced it with what's here. Which is also a bit unsatisfying, but I think it works. 
> 
> Well, thank you for reading. See you next time.


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